A Leaf on the Wind
by The Meta Guy
Summary: When the mayor of the small town of Leven abandons the village and its citizens for reasons unknown, Isabelle is left with no option beyond her last resort. This is a one-shot, dedicated to all the Animal Crossing towns over the years whose most prized citizens suddenly vanished without a trace...
The belltower chimed, just as it had done since before anyone could remember.

Five o'clock.

Sat at her desk inside town hall, Isabelle ignored the chimes. She'd grown accustomed to having to work through noise.

At present, she was busy attempting to finish up the city's expense reports for the year. The windmill they'd built last month had really put a dent in things, but with a little extra production from the Able Sisters next quarter things would hopefully stabilize. But then there was the cost of museum upkeep, and of keeping the HHA happy, and that wasn't even getting into Nook's cut...

There was nothing for it. The town of Leven was going nowhere, fast.

Isabelle leaned back in her chair with a heavy sigh. She really wasn't cut out for this sort of work. She was a secretary, not a miracle worker. This sort of thing should have been way above her pay grade. So why was she being forced to do this in the first place?

Even as she asked herself, she already knew the answer. In the absence of the mayor, the job of city management falls to the most qualified resident. Since nobody else in town felt compelled to step up, she had little choice but to do the best she could.

And at first, admittedly, it had been simple.

The mayor had certainly given her a lot to work with, and there was no indication that the absence would be a long one. In the early phases, she did what she could to pick up where her boss had left off, and for a time, things had continued running smoothly.

Days blended into weeks, which blended into months. It was a juggling act, to be sure, but Isabelle had it mostly covered. A budget cut here, a surplus there, renewing this ordinance but not that one.

But then, as they do, things just began to stack up beyond even Isabelle's abilities. The costs of running fishing tournaments and bug-offs every month began to have a significant damaging effect on the town's economy, and the sheer number of bugs and fish that were being caught for these events had started taking its toll on the local wildlife, to the point that nothing showed up anymore but sea bass and mole crickets, with the occasional ladybug or red snapper for variety.

To make matters worse, the residents were starting to despair at seeing their oldest friend still missing. Some of them, like the usually sociable Pierce, had taken to staying in their houses all day and night, barely venturing outside except for the occasional fishing attempt. Those who did spend time outside would mostly just walk slowly near the mayor's house, occasionally gazing into the windows to see if anyone was home yet. Someday, they seemed to hope, they'd see the mayor again.

But not everyone had been patient enough to keep waiting.

When Rosie moved away three months or so ago, nobody saw it coming. She'd always been the heart of the town, the one who could cheer anyone up, even old Croque. Isabelle had never seen her without a huge smile on her face, even when times really started getting rough. For her to leave out of nowhere, just like that, leaving nothing but a vacant lot and memories of a happier time...it hurt everyone. A lot.

As if that weren't enough, Lobo left soon afterward as well. This one didn't surprise anyone as much; he'd been complaining about things for a while, albeit in that sort of grandfatherly way where you knew deep down, he was just looking out for everyone's best interest. Not to mention, Isabelle had seen him and Rosie together a lot before the mayor left, so it was clear that they were close. Rosie leaving must have been rough on the guy. There was no blaming him; anyone would feel gutted after that.

A train whistle sounded outside, breaking Isabelle's train of thought, so to speak. It was the 5:15 express. She'd memorized the train schedule a while back, in the hopes of meeting the mayor at the station when the time came. But after a few months, she realized that the time wouldn't come.

So she'd redoubled her efforts, because that was what she was supposed to do. Right?

She dedicated her entire life to the town of Leven. Well, more so than she had in the first place, of course. She rarely slept, even more rarely ate, and did nothing all day but manage citizen complaints and clear up the ever-growing pile of paperwork that came in through the office. She'd occasionally find time to pop down to the coffee shop and grab a quick mocha from Brewster, but then it was back to work once again.

As a result, she'd started to unravel, bit by bit. Being mayor was surprisingly stressful work, even for someone like her with frankly absurd management skills. She stopped trying to empathize with the other citizens; emotion broke her workflow. Before long, fewer and fewer villagers began stopping by, even for a friendly chat. Even her own brother stopped coming in as often after she'd accidentally thrown a stapler at him. (That reminded her: she needed to stop by T.I.Y. this evening and pick up some aspirin.) She'd eventually settled into her own dull, gray existence of endless work, with occasional brief lunch breaks or power naps.

She sighed. Was it even worth it at this point?

It was clear that the mayor didn't plan on coming back, at least not anytime soon. She'd never had this sort of thing happen before, of course, but it seemed like there was nothing left to do but pull out the last resort.

The reset button.

Normally, the reset button was reserved for mayoral use only, and she never really figured out how to use it herself as a consequence. Her memories of past mayors using it were fuzzy anyhow; a sign of the button's power at work.

Yes, she'd been a secretary for countless other mayors in her relatively short life. The mayors varied in a number of ways—age, appearance, attitude, competence—but they had all ended up hitting the reset button at some point. Sometimes, like with Eva and Evopolis, it was used as a method of abdication after a long and successful tenure; in other cases, like the infamous hamlet of Butts, it was accidental, and came when the egomaniac mayor (whose name Isabelle would rather not remember) mercifully spilled a mug of Kilimanjaro on it, sparing her and the rest of the town from further injustice.

But never before had a mayor just...vanished. There was no protocol for it. What else could she do, now that she had tried and failed to keep Leven afloat on her own?

The other villagers would be the ones most affected; most if not all of them would be gone: not dead, obviously, but they wouldn't be living there anymore. The ones who stayed, if any, wouldn't remember a thing, or even really notice a change; the only thing they'd notice would be that everything they knew, including their house, had moved a bit. Everything else would seem the way it always was. Quite Orwellian, now that Isabelle thought about it.

The others—Nook, Blathers, Brewster, and the Able Sisters—would also forget everything, but they wouldn't care much even if they knew. Isabelle would be the only one capable of remembering anything, and even she would lose most of it to the void. All she'd have left was the time she spent with the mayor. The good times, the bad times, the flat-out weird times. Could she live with herself, knowing that this was the first time she herself had pressed the button? Could she go on, knowing that for the first time, she personally had failed?

Isabelle stood up. No. It wasn't failure. It was progress. No matter what happened with the next town, now she knew what to do if the situation ever happened again. This had been a learning experience, and all things considered one of the better ones at that. No shame in cutting her losses, right?

She walked over to the mayor's desk. It was covered in dust from more than a year's worth of non-use, and a cobweb had sprouted below it. She pushed a secret button under the corner of the desk, revealing a secret drawer with a keypad that popped out from the surface. She input the musical password—the town's anthem, one of her personal favorites—and the panel rotated to show a large white button with the word "RESET" printed in bold black letters in the center.

She lifted the cover and put her hand just above the button. As she did, she looked up for a brief moment and spotted something: a picture on her desk, showing her and the mayor, side-by-side, smiling.

She went over and picked up the picture. She remembered it like it was yesterday. It had been taken on Nature Day, just a couple of months after the mayor had moved in for the first time. She smiled as she stared down at the photo as memories of a simpler time came rushing back.

It had started to rain outside. Isabelle, picture, in hand, went back over to the desk, the button still waiting to be pressed. She positioned her hand over the button, then took one last look at the photo, tears beginning to well.

Isabelle shut her eyes tightly, and slammed her hand down on the button.

And even as she did, she knew that no matter what, this time, she'd remember everything.

She just knew it.


End file.
